1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, systems, and products for routing email according to its content.
2. Description of the Related Art
Prior art email allows mail messages to be exchanged between users of computers around the world and out of the world, to space shuttles and the International Space Station. Internet email in particular provides a standard communications mechanism for millions of computers connected to the Internet.
In the early days of email, email messages were very limited in features. They were restricted to ASCII characters; they had maximum line lengths and maximum message lengths. Modern email messages, however, support digital objects comprising audio, video, and graphic images. The modern email standard for the Internet, initiated in 1992, is called MIME, an acronym for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. MIME allows mail messages to contain multiple digital objects in a single message, text having unlimited line length or overall length, character sets other than ASCII (allowing non-English language messages), multi-font messages, and binary or application specific files. Digital objects supported in MIME messages include graphic images, audio, video and multi-media messages.
Email messages are delivered to email clients, software application programs capable of connecting to the Internet through mail servers and downloading email messages from electronic mailboxes maintained in email servers. An examples of email clients are Microsoft's well-known email applications called Outlook™ and Outlook Express™.
Despite the fact that such digital objects are fairly easy to prepare and email, however, their actual usefulness in email remains limited. Digital objects in email messages are delivered to a user's email client along with email messages, as part of them. The digital objects, however, are delivered only to the email client identified in an email account in an email server. There is no option to automatically deliver digital objects anywhere other than to the email client, despite the fact that a single email client might not necessarily be the most sensible place to send a digital object. It might be useful, for example, to send video objects to high-quality video players, video players having finer specifications more suited to display of high-quality video than is a typical email client. In present art, however, there is no way to automatically direct digital content of Internet email to destinations other than a particular email client.
The presence of digital objects within an email message typically is indicated by some graphic or icon displayed on the screen of the email client when the email message is received and opened by the recipient. To view or play the digital objects, user recipients are required to take particular action, install extensions to their email clients, open a player application, mouse-click on an icon, take some additional action. There is no provision in present art for more automated execution or display of digital objects in Internet email. For all these reasons, and for other reasons that will occur to those of skill in the art, there remains a need for improved methods of communicating and displaying digital objects in Internet email.